I hesitate, my soles cool against the landing’s floorboards. I should turn around. Go back to my room before someone finds me wandering in my dressing gown like a restless ghost.
But the freedom of the solarium beckons. I haven’t tasted the outdoors since the Shadow nearly took my leg off, and I need to. I need sky, an open expanse, freedom.
Or the illusion of it, anyway.
I reach for the handle. Maybe if I’m quick, no one will ever know I was ever up here.
The door opens on silent hinges, and I slip through. Darkness folds around me as I shut out the glow of the corridor. Glass panels soar overhead, so clear they barely seem to exist, and goddess, the stars shine so much brighter here than in Aethrolia. They hang closer, too, as if I could reach up and pluck them from the darkness.
I weave between the shadowed telescopes, the anxious energy inside me finally calming.
The sky stretches, so limitless I feel lost beneath it. But not in a bad way. In a way that makes my problems feel almost manageable. Because beneath these same stars, the human world still spins. At this very moment, my sisters sleep in their beds, their heads against the pillows, their dreams peaceful. In the morning, they’ll wake beneath this sky like always. Trek up the hill to the temple. They’ll kneel together and pray, touched by the cool rays of dawn.
At breakfast, my father will smile at them across the table. Evelyn and Brynne will split a single biscuit, while Carina will have her own. Then they’ll retire to read, each from her own copy of the Book of Disciplines.
So little has changed in their world. I may be gone, but beyond those trees and mountains, life moves on without me.
The knowledge pains me and soothes me in equal measure.
A faint sound scrapes through the darkness, cutting off my thoughts. I spin to face it, my stare piercing the shadows, then straighten. A hulking shadow occupies the chair by the windows. One whose outline I know even in the dark.
Amriel. He reclines there, his posture loose, the glint of reflected starlight betraying the wine bottle in his hand.
He must hear my sudden intake of breath, because he chuckles, a low, liquid sound that floats from the shadows and coils around my insides.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he says.
I hover, caught between staying and leaving. I could go, just turn around and walk away, but something about finding him like this—alone in the dark, staring out over the forest—carves an ache into me.
I step closer without consciously deciding to. “No. You couldn’t, either?”
“I never can.” He makes a rueful sound. “Not anymore. This place used to help. I’d come up here as a boy, wish on a shooting star. As long as I saw one, I could go back to my room, fall right to sleep.”
I stay still, waiting for more.
“It doesn’t work, anymore,” he continues. “Now that I know there’s no use in wishing for anything. But I still come up here, still watch for the stars. Old habits, maybe.”
Heat swishes and swirls inside me. He’s never spoken to me this way before. Never sounded so…unguarded, and it makes me wonder just how much wine he’s had tonight. “I find that hard to believe.”
“What? That I used to wish on stars?”
“No. That you were a boy, once. I can’t picture it. You must’ve always been this big. You must’ve always had that scowl.”
He chuckles, and I pull my dressing gown tighter, as if the velvet and satin can shield me from that smoky caress. There’s a looseness to his laugh, a husky warmth I’ve never heard before.
“That didn’t come until later, I assure you.” A few moments pass in silence. “I didn’t learn to scowl until I met Alanna.”
The words prod at me. “You mean…once she cursed you?”
“Yes. Well, before that. When I realized what she wanted from me. Though I didn’t know yet how much my life would change when I refused her.”
I hold that in my mind, taking its measure. The idea runs counter to everything I’ve ever been taught, and yet…I don’t know anymore, what I really believe. “Does the curse hurt you that badly, then?”
He shifts in his chair. “If having half my soul ripped away and being forced to live without it hurts, then yes.”
A corner of my heart cracks. He says it so matter-of-factly, and yet I taste the weight of pain buried in those words. “Do you hurt right now?”
This time, his laugh is so soft I barely catch it. “Do you actually care?”
